Recently in Exhibitions Category

Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678), Louis XIV, 1664. Engraving. Inscription: Ludovicus XIIII Dei Gratia Franciae Et Navarrae Rex. Graphic Arts collection GA 2005.01127.
Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905.

Congratulations to Volker Schroder, Associate Professor of French and Italian, who was just awarded a David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic grant for the research and development of an exhibition celebrating Versailles and the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV (1638-1715). Thanks to the Council of the Humanities and especially to our magic benefactor, Lynn Shostack. Prof. Schroder will develop “Versailles on Paper,” using prints and books in the Graphic Arts Collection, as well as rare books from Firestone and Marquand Libraries. The opening is scheduled for February 2015. A special issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle is also planned.

Robert Nanteuil, (1623-1678), Louis XIV, 1663. Engraving. Inscription: Ludovicus XIIII Dei Gratia Franciae Et Navarrae Rex.’ Graphic Arts collection GA 2005.01126.
Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905.

Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678), Louis XIV, 1668. Engraving. 8/8. Inscription: Se, et ultimas licentiae Theologicae theses // vouet et consecrat. // Humillimus Subditus, Julius Paulus de Lionne.’ Graphic Arts collection GA 2005.01149.
Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905

“On the 18th of April, 1651, the young Louis … paid his first visit to Versailles. He was then thirteen years of age, and had been king for eight years. He came to hunt in the woods, and … to sup at the chateau of his father, a building of moderate size, constructed on three sides of a court, with a pavilion at each corner, and surrounded by moats with stone balustrades. The site of that chateau and of its moats is now covered by the great central projection of Louis’s palace.”

“During the next ten years … [he] did little in the way of building or embellishment until 1662. From 1662 to 1669 he adorned the park and gave magnificent fetes there. In 1669 he decided to enlarge the chateau, but he was not to carry out his purpose without encountering opposition.”

“[Jean-Baptiste] Colbert was then superintendent of buildings as well as of finance, and Colbert’s hobby was the Louvre. He set himself resolutely against the king’s project, and did not hesitate to speak his mind. “Your Majesty knows,” he wrote to the king, “that apart from brilliant actions in war nothing marks better the grandeur and genius of princes than their buildings, and that posterity measures them by the standard of the superb edifices which they erect during their lives. Oh, what a pity that the greatest king, and the most virtuous, should be measured by the standard of Versailles.”
—from James Eugene Farmer, Versailles and the Court under Louis XIV (1905) Firestone DC126 .F23 1905

Robert Nanteuil (1623-1678), Louis XIV, 1666. Engraving. Inscription: Ludovicus XIIII Dei Gratia Franciae et Navarrae Rex. Graphic Arts GA 2005.01150.
Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905.

Congratulations to our good colleagues at the Princeton University Art Museum and Efthymia Rentzou, Assistant Professor of French and Italian, who have mounted the exhibition 1913: The Year of Modernism. Their website has just been launched and can be found here: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/1913-modernism.

The wonderful show includes many works from the Graphic Arts Collection, Rare Books, Marquand Library, and other collections, along with the holdings of the Art Museum. It’s great to see this integration of image and text, so important to the artists and writers of the period.

There will also be an important international conference entitled 1913: The Year of French Modernism (April 19-20, 2013), organized by Princeton University professors Efthymia Rentzou and André Benhaim from the Department of French and Italian. Florent Masse, director of Princeton’s French theater troupe L’Avant Scène will present Guillaume Apollinaire’s 1917 surrealist play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (the Breasts of Tirésias) on April 19.

Since the summer of 2008, when Professor Rubén Gallo first entered a tiny French antique shop and discovered a 1920s Pathé-Baby home movie projector along with approximately eight hundred 9.5 mm silent films, we have been working to bring this material into the classrooms of Princeton University.

Thanks to the generous support of Lynn Shostack and the David A. Gardner '69 Magic Project in both 2009 and 2010, we were able to partner with the Colorlab Preservation Laboratory of Rockville, Maryland, which is one of the few companies in the United States capable of undertaking the arduous process of hand-cleaning, replasticizing, and transferring the 9.5 mm film stock to a digital medium. Each film was treated individually, and a pause was inserted at a total of 11,067 title frames to give enough time for them to be read.

The first group of digitized films is now available for viewing. Each film is only two or three minutes long. You can either browse the pages of the website or search by key word using the box at the top right. Some films last through more than one reel and a few are hand colored. We will continue to add new films to the site as they are catalogued.

We are extremely grateful to Lynn Shostack and the Gardner fund, along with the entire Council of the Humanities, led by Executive Director Carol Rigolot, for their support and encouragement of this magical project.

[Don't miss The Voice of the Nightingale, A fairy tale in 4 parts adapted for the screen by M. Starewicz. http://rbsc.princeton.edu/pathebaby/node/1776]

Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852), Physiognotrace portrait of Thomas Jefferson, n.d. [1804]. Engraving and copperplate. 7.1 x 6.6 cm. Graphic Arts French prints. Gift of Charles Scribner Jr., Class of 1943.

The French musician Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1754-1811) invented the physiognotrace (physionotrace in French) in 1887. He used the apparatus to trace the silhouette of a sitter and at the same time, create a reduced copy, which could be used to engrave a lifelike image on a copper plate. Chalk drawings and oil sketches were also made using this technique. One of Chrétien’s earliest sitters was Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who paid for the privilege while in Paris.

Eight years later, the French émigré Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) brought a physiognotrace to the United States and Jefferson, now age sixty-one, again sat for a portrait. According to records at Monticello, Jefferson purchased 48 prints of his own portrait and collected a number of other portraits of friends and colleagues, which sold for about $25 each.

Both a print and the copper plate are on view in our Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the exhibition, Capping Liberty: The Invention of a Numismatic Iconography for the New American Republic, on view through July 8, 2012.

See also Howard Rice, “Saint-Memin’s Portrait of Jefferson,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 20 (Summer 1959): 182-92. http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/pulc/pulcv20n_4.pdf

See also Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, Monticello: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jefferson-portrait-saint-m%C3%A9min-physiognotrace

On April 28, the International Obscura Day, you are invited to Firestone Library for a rare viewing of selected life and death masks from the Laurence Hutton Collection. Hutton was the dramatic critic for the New York Evening Mail from 1872 to 1874 and literary editor of Harper’s Magazine from 1886 to 1898. In 1897, he received the degree of A.M. from Princeton University and presented Rare Books and Special Collections with his collection of over sixty death masks of distinguished men and women.

A group of the expressive memonto mori will be on view from noon to 5:00. Stop by when you are able, free of charge. At 2:00, there will be an informal talk about these iconic artifacts, how they were made and how they found their way from a trash can in Manhattan to the rare book vaults of Princeton University.

The Atlas Obscura, a compendium of the world’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica, was founded in 2009 by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras. To be included a place should appeal to our sense of wonder and curiosity, “places that expand our sense of what is possible and tell us something about ourselves, and about the wider world in which we live.”

Once each year, hundreds people around the world join together to create Obscura Day, offering rare and unusual sights and experiences to anyone who wishes to attend. Here is a link to Obscura Day 2011: http://atlasobscura.com/obscura-day/

When the complete list for Obscura Day 2012 is ready, it will be posted here: http://obscuraday.com

Sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with special thanks to Karin Trainer and the Princeton University Library for the loan of artwork. For directions and gallery hours, call 609-497-2441. http://wws.princeton.edu/bernstein/

Detail from Beer Street, 1751. Etching and engraving.

Support for the exhibition and this event was provided by the Friends of the Princeton University Library; Princeton University History Department; and Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. Our sincere thanks go also to a team of specialists who offered their advice on the show and its related events, including Linda Colley, Nigel Smith, James Steward, Stan Katz, Sandra Brooke, and John Burkhalter.

For more information, see our website: http://rbsc.princeton.edu/hogarth

A tape of the event has been archived here: http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/flash/lectures/20111007hogarthpanel.shtml

Detail from The Roast Beef Cantata, 1748. Courtesy of a private collector.

According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music, The Roast Beef of Old England was an English national song whose tune has become associated with the serving of dinner at public functions, and occasionally used as a signal for the same in the army. The air is a fine marked specimen of English melody, and is probably the composition of Richard Leveridge, who doubtless sang the song in public. The first two verses were inserted in Henry Fielding’s ballad opera, Don Quixote in England, produced in 1733. They are considered to be by Fielding himself, and are marked as to be sung to the air The Queen’s old Courtier.

Other sources indicate there were three versions of the words of this song: the original two verses by Fielding (1731); Leveridge’s six verses, the first being simply an appropriation of Fielding’s; and The Roast Beef Cantata, by Theodosius Forest, as seen in William Hogarth’s print, The Gate of Calais (1748).

Here are a few lines:

THE ROAST BEEF CANTATA.
‘Twas at the gate of Calais, Hogarth tells,
Where sad despair and famine always dwells,
A meagre Frenchman, Madame Grand-sire’s cook,
Ah home he steered, his carcase that way took.
Bending beneath the weight of famed Sirloin,
On whom he’d often wish’d in vain to dine,
Good Father Dominick by chance came by,
With rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye;
Who, when he first beheld the greasy load,
His benediction on it he bestowed;
And as the solid fat his fingers press’d,
He lick’d his chaps, and thus the knight address’d:
“Oh, rare roast beef, lov’d by all mankind,
If I was doom’d to have thee, when dress’d and garnish’d to my mind,
And swimming in thy gravy, not all thy country’s force combin’d
Should from my fury save thee.

Hogarth’s print and the broadside with the poem are both on view in our gallery.

Detail from Beer Street, 1751. Etching and engraving.

William Hogarth is mentioned in two trials, but as these took place after the death of our artist, we can assume it was a different William Hogarth. The poor Parish of St. Giles, where so many of Hogarth’s scenes took place, is mentioned in 706 proceedings.

The directors of the Old Bailey Online project, and authors of all the historical background pages, are Professor Clive Emsley (Open University), Professor Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire) and Professor Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield). Prof. Hitchcock has spent the last twenty years helping to create a ‘new history from below’ which puts the experiences and agency of the poor and of working people at the heart of our understanding of the history of eighteenth-century Britain. He will be speaking at Princeton University for the Library’s opening celebration on 7 October 2011.

For more information, see http://rbsc.princeton.edu/hogarth/.

Detail from Beer Street, 1751. Etching and engraving.

Detail from A Midnight Modern Conversation, 1732/33. Etching, 3rd state.

On Sunday, 13 November 2011, The Practitioners of Musick will present Hogarth and His Musical Friends at 3:00, featuring John Burkhalter on English and small flutes; Clara Rottsolk, soprano; Donna Fournier, Baroque cello; and Donovan Klotzbeacher on harpsichord. A reception will follow in the main gallery of Firestone Library.

A gallery tour with the curator will be offered on Sunday 23 October 2011 at 3:00 in the Firestone Library main gallery.

This exhibition and its related events are free and open to the public thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the Princeton University History Department, and the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. For more information, please call 609-258-3197.

Detail from Industry and Idleness, plate 3, 1747. Engraving.

In addition, a website has been built, mapping the eighteenth-century locations depicted in Hogarth’s prints on a contemporary London street map.

View Sin and the City: William Hogarth’s London in a larger map. Then, compare it to John Rocque’s A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1745. Available in full at: Rocque. These maps will also be available in the gallery.

The Princeton University Art Museum opens the exhibition Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage on March 26, 2010. The University libraries are loaning a few items to compliment this already fabulous display of the artist’s work. From Graphic Arts will come two pamphlets from the Die Silbergäule series featuring cover designs by Schwitters.

For more information on this wonderful exhibition, see: http://www.princetonartmuseum.org/events/schwitters/

Our exhibition The Author’s Portrait: “O, could he but have drawne his Wit” is closing soon and our old friends are going back into storage. The final day to visit will be July 3, 2010 since Firestone Library will be closed on July 4 and 5. Until then, the exhibition galleries are on summer hours if you want to stop by one more time before the show closes: Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., and weekends, 12:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The Author’s Portrait: “O, could he but have drawne his Wit”

Beginning January 22, 2010, Firestone Library’s main gallery will be filled with 100 portraits of poets, novelists, and essayists, pulled from the holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, marble sculptures, and plaster death masks, dating from 1481 to 1989, will be on view. Among the writers featured are William Shakespeare, Virgil, Mark Twain, George Sand, and Sojourner Truth. Artists whose work will be on view include William Blake, Constantin Brancusi, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Willem de Passe, and Auguste Rodin. The exhibition continues through July 5, 2010.

Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Associate Professor of American Art and Director of the Program in Visual Studies, University of Pennsylvania will deliver the opening lecture entitled: “The Ideal Pencil: Poetry, Portraiture, and Prejudice,” focusing on African American writer Phillis Wheatley and portraits of African American women writers in the 18th century. The lecture will begin at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 24, 2010, in 101 McCormick Hall. No reservations are necessary. A reception will follow in the gallery at approximately 5:00 p.m.

In addition, an annotated checklist of the exhibition will be published, illustrated with fifty of the portraits and an introductory essay by Dr. Tom Hare, the William Sauter LaPorte ‘28 Professor in Regional Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton. The exhibition will be open to the public Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., and weekends, 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. Gallery tours will held on Sunday, March 21 at 3:00 and on Friday, May 7 at noon.

The exhibition’s subtitle is from one of the many epigraphs that accompany the authors’ portraits. This one is from Ben Jonson’s verses in Shakespeare’s 1623 first folio.

To the Reader.
This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the Graver had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life :
O, could he but have drawne his Wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face ; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

The galleries at Firestone Library are only used for collections owned by Princeton University. This saves us from the controversy facing the New Museum of Contemporary Art and its decision to exhibit a large amount of work from the private collection of one of its trustees.

This decision has not only led to a flurry of articles but the cover of the November Brooklyn Rail is devoted to William Powhida’s wonderful graphic satire of the principal characters involved. Powhida’s drawing is reminiscent of the newspaper covers printed in the early twentieth-century at the New York World. See: Nicholson Baker, The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer’s Newspaper, 1898-1911 (New York: Bulfinch Press, 2005). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2005-0624Q. I hope this trend continues.

For more information on Powhida, see http://www.williampowhida.com/

For more on the Brooklyn Rail, see http://www.brooklynrail.org/

For more information on the exhibition controversy, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/arts/design/11museum.html?_r=1

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Controversy-over-New-Museum-s-plans-to-show-trustee-s-collection/19659

The sculptor and book artist Werner Pfeiffer is currently installing an exhibition of his work down the road at the University of Pennsylvania, opening Thursday, September 17, 2009, at 5:30 p.m. http://www.library.
upenn.edu/exhibits/pfeiffer.html. This seems like a good opportunity to mention two recent acquisitions of Mr. Pfeiffer’s work in the graphic arts collection at Princeton University.

Errantry is a scroll inspired by Der Triumphzug Kaiser Maximilians or The Triumphal Procession of the Emperor Maximilian (1515), a series of 130 woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473-1531) and others. Pfeiffer has created his own militant parade of 20th-century violence and agression.

The title and text are based on a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1930s, thought by many to be about war. The poem used in this scroll is an adaptation with only two or three lines directly quoting the original but with the syntax, rhyme, and meter of Tolkien’s writing.

The text and images are set against a chilling chronology of war, conflict, and genocide in the 20th century, printed digitally on a 27 foot long canvas. The scroll is housed in an actual 105 mm Howitzer artillery brass casting, manufactured for use in the M14 gun in 1943.

Werner Pfeiffer, Abracadabra: an homage to Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman; a set of typographic explorations (Red Hook, N.Y.: Pear Whistle Press, 2007).

“Abracadabra is a book about magic,” writes Pfeiffer, “Not the illusory trickery of a conjuror, but the magic of an artist’s work.” It is an homage to Dutch graphic artist and resistance fighter Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (1882-1945), who was executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. In particular, it is a recognition of the inventive typographic works Werkman called drucksels. These unusual pieces combine letterforms with geometry and color. Pfeiffer has created a set of designs based on the letterforms of Abracadabra both in individual plates and in three flexagon structures that can be folded and flipped into multiple forms of fabulous visual geometry.

Lia Markey, Curatorial Research Assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Princeton University Art Museum, has mounted a small exhibition focusing on the Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605), including several prints from the graphic arts collection. These engravings, printed at the Antwerp workshop of Philips Galle (1537-1612) after Stradanus’s designs, depict nova reperta or new discoveries, such as the revolutionary changes in printing. In fact, in the frontispiece for the series, seen above, Markey notes that Stradanus places the printing press above the cannon.

For more information, see
Jan van der Straet (1523-1605), New Discoveries; the Sciences, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as Represented in 24 Engravings Issued in the Early 1580’s by Stradanus (Norwalk, Conn.: Burndy Library, 1953) Marquand Library (SA) Oversize NE674.S89 A3q

Jan van der Straet (1523-1605), Johannes Stradanus, compiled by Marjolein Leesberg ; edited by Huigen Leeflang (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & Vision Publishers, in co-operation with the Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2008). Marquand Library (SA) ND673.S85 A4 2008

Princeton University Art Museum is open to the public, free of charge: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/

An illustrated lecture entitled “Making Pictures for the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Artists and Publishers” will be presented by Julie Davis, Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall, followed by a reception in the Milberg Gallery. This event is in conjunction with the exhibition “Beauty & Bravado in Japanese Woodblock Prints: Highlights from the Gillett G. Griffin Collection given in honor of Dale Roylance” on view in the Milberg Gallery, Firestone Library, through June 7, 2009.

The Milberg Gallery is open to the public, free of charge, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Wednesday evenings, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is located on the second floor of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University, One Washington Road, Princeton, New Jersey. For information on visiting the campus, see: http://www.princeton.edu/main/visiting

Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III, 1786-1865), Chapter Thirty-four: Wakana No Jô, from the series: Parody on the Fifty-four Chapters of the Tale of Genji (Genji gojûyojô), 1858, 9th month. Signed: Toyokuni ga. Publisher: Wakasaya Yoichi. Ôban tate-e diptych. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e).

A reception and gallery tour will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 25, 2009, for the opening of “Beauty and Bravado in Japanese Woodblock Prints: Highlights from the Gillett G. Griffin Collection” in the Milberg Gallery of the Princeton University Library.

Yashima Gakutei (1786?-1868), Number Five: Dancers on Stage (from the series The Dance at Furuichi for the Hisakatayo Poetry Group), ca. 1822. Color woodblock print. Gift of Gillett G. Griffin in honor of Dale Roylance. Graphic Arts Division

The prints on display offer examples of changing fashions and evolving print technologies in Japan from the late 1600s to the mid-1800s. They are part of the collection donated by Gillett Griffin, curator emeritus of the Princeton University Graphic Arts Collection, in honor of Dale Roylance. The exhibition will be on view from January 18 to June 7, 2009.

In 1947, when Griffin was a student at Yale University’s School of Fine Arts, one of his professors invited a Japanese print dealer to visit. Gillett’s eye fell on a small black-and-white print, which he purchased for the enormous sum of $2.00. The dealer was impressed that such a young man would see the beauty in what turned out to be a print by Hishikawa Moronobu (ca. 1618-1694).

Four New York art sales that winter featured Japanese prints, three at Parke-Bernet and one at Gimbels Department Store (both Gimbels and Macy’s sold fine art in those days). Griffin made it to three of the four sales, and by the end of the year had a collection of almost seventy classic Japanese woodblock prints. “I really had no money,” he said. “But this was only a few years after Pearl Harbor and there was still a great deal of hostility and so, not many buyers.” Griffin continued to study and collect for more than sixty years.

A lecture on Japanese prints will be given by Julie Davis, Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall, followed by a reception in the Milberg Gallery. The Milberg Gallery is open to the public, free of charge, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Wednesday evenings, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is located on the second floor of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University, One Washington Road, Princeton, New Jersey. For information on visiting the campus, see: http://www.princeton.edu/main/visiting

Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III, 1786-1865), Chapter Thirty-four: Wakana No Jô, from the series: Parody on the Fifty-four Chapters of the Tale of Genji (Genji gojûyojô), 1858, 9th month. Signed: Toyokuni ga. Publisher: Wakasaya Yoichi. Ôban tate-e diptych. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e).

This unassuming little book gives the reader no indication of the riches it holds inside. The design of the text and eight double page illustrations are the work of Carl Otto Czeschka, a leading member of the Vienna Secession. Czeschka studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and worked as a designer for the Wiener Werkstätte from 1905 until 1908 when he left for a teaching post at Hamburgs’ Kunstgewerbeschule. Czeschka went on to design for a variety of media including jewelry, metalwork, textiles, furniture and book design.

This copy of Die Nibelungen will be included in an exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum from March 21 to June 7, 2009. The show, entitled “Myth and Modernity: Ernst Barlach’s Images of The Nibelungen and Faust” will offer the first American showing of the Nibelungen drawing cycle by Barlach.

A reception and gallery tour will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 25, 2009, for the opening of “Beauty and Bravado in Japanese Woodblock Prints: Highlights from the Gillett G. Griffin Collection” in the Milberg Gallery of the Princeton University Library.

Yashima Gakutei (1786?-1868), Number Five: Dancers on Stage (from the series The Dance at Furuichi for the Hisakatayo Poetry Group), ca. 1822. Color woodblock print. Gift of Gillett G. Griffin in honor of Dale Roylance. Graphic Arts Division

The prints on display offer examples of changing fashions and evolving print technologies in Japan from the late 1600s to the mid-1800s. They are part of the collection donated by Gillett Griffin, curator emeritus of the Princeton University Graphic Arts Collection, in honor of Dale Roylance. The exhibition will be on view from January 18 to June 7, 2009.

In 1947, when Griffin was a student at Yale University’s School of Fine Arts, one of his professors invited a Japanese print dealer to visit. Gillett’s eye fell on a small black-and-white print, which he purchased for the enormous sum of $2.00. The dealer was impressed that such a young man would see the beauty in what turned out to be a print by Hishikawa Moronobu (ca. 1618-1694).

Four New York art sales that winter featured Japanese prints, three at Parke-Bernet and one at Gimbels Department Store (both Gimbels and Macy’s sold fine art in those days). Griffin made it to three of the four sales, and by the end of the year had a collection of almost seventy classic Japanese woodblock prints. “I really had no money,” he said. “But this was only a few years after Pearl Harbor and there was still a great deal of hostility and so, not many buyers.” Griffin continued to study and collect for more than sixty years.

A lecture on Japanese prints will be given by Julie Davis, Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall, followed by a reception in the Milberg Gallery. The Milberg Gallery is open to the public, free of charge, weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Wednesday evenings, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5:00 p.m. The gallery is located on the second floor of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University, One Washington Road, Princeton, New Jersey. For information on visiting the campus, see: http://www.princeton.edu/main/visiting

Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III, 1786-1865), Chapter Thirty-four: Wakana No Jô, from the series: Parody on the Fifty-four Chapters of the Tale of Genji (Genji gojûyojô), 1858, 9th month. Signed: Toyokuni ga. Publisher: Wakasaya Yoichi. Ôban tate-e diptych. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e).